Sunday, January 6, 2008

Movie Review: Juno

I saw this movie the other night thought I might throw out some of my ideas about it.

First I arrived 5 mins into the picture as I had to stop at my local watering hole to meet Big Worm, Natalie and her BF Kevin. Worm was almost drunk and he said to catch up, so of course Baby just fed us shots and mixed drinks that we downed in under 10 minutes. Kevin drove us to the theatre, by the time we sat down Tony was flat drunk.

Anyways. The movie.

Juno excels and suffers from the same thing, writing. Ellen Page plays Juno, a teenage girl who gets pregnant from her best friend, Paulie Bleeker, played by Superbad co-star Michael Cera. Ellen Page gets nearly 100% of the screen time while Cera shows up at a measly 30% or less. None the less, Page's character has some extremely witty lines and she's sarcastic as fuck about the whole being pregnant thing. I wont toss out any plot lines at all, but her father played by JK Simmons who was the Chief in the Spiderman movies has a few great scenes with his daughter Juno.

Like I said the movie excels with its writing, but it also suffers form its writing, Its not that the writing hurts the movie there is just instances where the writing tries a little too hard. Juno will say some real witty stuff, then its almost like they tried TOO hard for her to be smart and she just sounds like shes just spewing out random lines that are over the head of everyone in the scene. The relationship between Juno and Bleeker isn't really shown too much, maybe there was alot of it in the first 5 mins I missed but Bleeker really doesn't seem like he's all to concerned about the baby. But as the movie progresses Juno realizes how much she cares for Bleeker although there isn't that much interaction between them.

The movie is overall a comedy with some sweetness mixed in, and you can tell where the movie is going to take the sentimental turn, but there is an awkward almost pedophile moment in the movie luckily the movie didnt go that direction but it was awkward. Jason Batemen and Jennifer Garner turn in good unknown performances, I said unknown because I had no clue they were in the film at all.

Basically this is a pretty good film with some witty sarcastic dialouge. Anyone who is a parent the final 30 mins will them a little hard, especially mothers. Go see this movie if you haven't with alot of crappy CGI shit out there and boring stories, this movie has a simple story but will keep your attention.